Inspector Tells Of Teams' Dead Ends

January 01, 2003|By SERGEI L. LOIKO and MAGGIE FARLEY Special to the Daily Press

BAGHDAD, IRAQ — In their search for hidden Iraqi arms, U.N. inspectors have so far faced little conflict, have found little evidence and have received little outside intelligence to guide them, one inspector said. The teams have discovered two technical violations that could be considered violations, but have yet to find a smoking gun, a trace of radiation, or a single germ spore.

"If our goal is to catch them with their pants down, we are definitely losing," the inspector said, on condition he would not be named. "We haven't found an iota of concealed material yet."

In one of the first glimpses of the inspection process from inside Iraq, the inspector described a team of experts who have been thwarted by Iraqi authorities who have better preparation, equipment and intelligence than the inspectors. Their minders have faster cars, better radios with which to alert others that inspectors are on their way and, of course, know just where they're going and what they're looking for.

The list of Iraq's violations is short. During the four years that inspectors have not been allowed in the country, the Iraqis tried to procure missile parts and altered others without notifying the United Nations, the inspector said -- two incidents that could be considered a breach of U.N. resolutions, but perhaps not enough to justify military action.

But their roster of frustrations is long. There are currently 110 U.N. weapons experts in Iraq -- 100 searching for chemical and biological weapons and 10 looking for evidence of a nuclear program. Their mission is nearly impossible -- trying to locate suspected caches of material or documents in a country the size of California.

Their work is relentless -- sometimes, the teams conduct seven inspections a day, which means early wake-up calls, long drives and intense searches. Monday was that kind of day as inspectors made seven visits, including to a water-purification plant and a revisit of a missile factory.

In order to keep their plans secret from wiretaps, moles or eavesdropping devices, inspectors operate like spies, passing notes about the day's plans rather than speaking aloud and driving their U.N. jeeps in circles to confound those trying to guess their destination.

But often, inspectors say, by the time the U.N. convoys arrive at a site, the factory gates are open, and the workers are waiting. The Iraqis have been obliging, even eager to please, allowing the inspectors to wander through the bedrooms of a once-off-limits presidential palace "like idle museumgoers," he said.

"Even private facilities which are not part of their state-run military-industrial complex open up for us -- like magic," the inspector said. "But even if they open all the doors in Iraq for us and keep them open 24 hours a day, we won't be able to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if it is not there. We need help. We need information. We need intelligence reports if they exist."

The inspector said that he and his colleagues feel acute pressure from the Bush administration to uncover something soon, but if the United States has provided its long-promised intelligence, they haven't seen it.

"We can't look for something which we don't know about. If the United States wants us to find something, they should open their intelligence file and share it with us, so that we know where to go for it."

A senior Bush administration official confirmed Monday that the United States has passed on "high-quality" information regarding suspected chemical or biological sites but that the inspectors hadn't acted on it.

"They have gotten some intelligence, and they will get more," the official said. "But what the U.S. intelligence community is concerned about is whether they can use the intelligence fruitfully and not have it compromised to the Iraqis in a way it loses its value. It is as much a test of the inspectors as it is of Iraq."

Past inspection teams were infiltrated by moles who reported the U.N. experts' plans to Iraqi authorities. This time, the demands for secrecy are intense.

"We are not allowed to say a word about what we are doing," said the inspector, noting that the Iraqis usher journalists into just-searched sites and brief them in detail about what questions the experts asked and what they were looking for.

"By being silent, we may create the false illusion that we did uncover something," he said. "But I must say that if we were to publish a report now, we would have zilch to put in it."

In the past, the inspectors' best source of information came from defectors who had worked on the weapons program, and U.S. officials are pressuring the U.N. teams to take scientists and relatives out of the country for interviews. As instructed, last week Iraqi authorities provided inspectors with a list of 500 scientists who headed or worked on weapons programs. Probably a thousand more have knowledge of weapons work, the inspector said.